Fair Fair fares at a fair Fair affair

I tutor GED for a community service organization and many of my "kids" are convicted felons.  I was under the impression that everyone was mandated to obtain their GED while in prison if they already did not have one nor their diploma but, I am obviously wrong. 

One of my charges was able to obtain a job with the state working at the State Fair in Syracuse.  I applaud the state for giving this guy a second chance and a job, especially since he has no apparent education.  Actually, this guy, with about 16 arrests for drugs and burglary, is a math wiz.  His skill with numbers is amazing.  The problem is, everything he knows is in the metric system because that is the system drug dealers use on the street.  The examples of Sally using inches and ounces make no sense to him and he has little use for the Imperial system in his line of work. 

So he asked me if I would like any comp passes to the fair and I said that I would.  He asked me how many I wanted and I said that I just needed two.  He pulled out a wad of tickets about half an inch thick.  I didn't ask but I surmised that he purloined this tidy treasure of tickets and while I still applaud the state, this just proves the old adage that sometimes no good deed goes unpunished. 

To make amends for my possibly ill-gotten admission passes, I decided that I would purchase something superfluous valued at twenty dollars from some random vendor at the fair.  I did and I will share that treasure with you later.

There were many pleasant surprises to the NYS Fair.  First, parking was free.  During the drive in, there were no peripheral businesses shutting down for the day in order to make a lucrative profit from their parking lots much like you would find at other fairs such as The Big E.  Parking was plentiful, the attendants were efficient and the lots appeared to be tiered on a hill.  We took the first lot we came to and it was on what appeared to be the third tier.  Much to my surprise, they had shuttle buses running every few minutes to ferry the visitors directly to the front entrance.  The people packing strollers had the option to take a pedestrian walkway high above the freeways of the city. 

On my bus, a couple with three kids decided to haul their stroller and a cooler onto the shuttle where they had difficulty navigating the turn.  While holding up our bus, the driver told them to take the stroller back outside and to the side door where it was a straight line into the bus.  Dad backed out with the stroller only to find that the back of the bus was packed.  The driver said that another shuttle was coming right up behind him.  That left mom alone with the three kids who were bursting with alacrity at the prospect of going to the fair.

At one point one of the children drifted down the aisle a bit and this made mom livid as she openly yelled and threatened the child that she would withhold ice cream, cotton candy and rides.  I felt bad for the kid since he suffered from the ailment of childhood exuberance and I thought that he would probably have been content taking the sky-walk and, it wasn't his fault that his lazy mom and dad decided to attempt taking a bulky stroller and cooler onto a crowded bus. 

That is another thing, you may bring your own food onto the fair grounds.  Good for the state.  This makes it so that people with limited lucre don't have to be at the mercy of the price gouging vendors within the park.  However, even that wasn't necessarily so at this state fair. 

You can often expect to pay three to four dollars for a bottle of water at most fairs.  Not at the NYS Fair.  One vendor was charging $1 and another was asking $1 for two bottles.  Soda:  $1.  Fried dough: $3.  You'd pay five or six dollars for that at other fairs.  A chicken or fish dinner was only $6.95 where at other fairs you would pay at least ten bucks.  Soda not included.

My date and I went to one of the cafeteria eateries where we each had a sausage and pepper sandwich, fries and re-fillable soda.  The total was $15.  That would have cost us about $30 at a fair such as the Big E and other smaller county fairs where gouging the customer is de rigueur. 

There was also a wine tasting tent which sported about fifteen tasting stations where you could try samples from little two ounce cups (I don't know what that is in metrics) to your heart's content.  There was another tent offering free and delicious wine slushies.  These sample stations were advertising NY wine makers and both tents were packed. 

Although they were checking ID's and there were many peripatetic security personnel , this did not deter many teens from drinking at the fair.  Several times I saw kids between tents or around the corners of buildings with a bottle in their hand.  On our shuttle ride back to the car, we suffered the unfortunate malady to be riding with a knot of drunken teenagers and two of the girls were so loud they overpowered the din of the rest of the bus.  Where were their parents?

What was really sad about our day, never have I seen such rude people before (other than in a church parking lot).  While getting on the shuttle to go back to our car, there was a stampede of people as the doors to the buses opened up.  Just in front of us several teens came up the side of the bus and one of them stepped in front of the crowd with his back to us and held up his arms in a cruciform stance.  This blocked the crowd and allowed his friends to slip in ahead of everyone else queued in line.  A woman in front of me ducked under his arm and with her elbow she clocked him in the ribs and then said something of a copulative nature.  The boy doubled over as the crowd quickly overtook him. 

The seats on the bus were contoured so each bench could seat two people.  An Asian woman was alone and she sat on the mini hump in the middle of the seat thus, taking up two spaces.  The bus had standing room only and several people were making snide remarks about this woman taking up two spaces.  She completely ignored them.  A woman behind me muttered from the ancient art of the invective, the "Ch" word, the concision of insult to an Asian.

As I was standing, I rotated my body around so that I could see her and I noticed that she was wearing a crucifix around her neck.  The crucifix, a symbol of passion, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, new life and sacrifice was obviously lost on her.  It was merely jewelry or bling.  As the old joke goes, had Jesus been guilty of a felony today, she would have been sporting either a gold plated hypodermic needle or an electric chair around her neck. 

When we got off the bus, as the horde of people dissipated, one of the drunken teens took it upon himself to whip it out and void right there in the open.  His female companion just stood there and waited.  This didn't bother me for as a hiker, this happens all the time on the trails and summits.  When you gotta go you gotta go.  Now, had a child witnessed this henious act this boy could have been arrested and ended up on the sex offender registry where he would be unemployable, probably driven out of his home by an angry mob and would not be able to hand out candy on Halloween.  Ironically, anyone who reads the paper knows that most sex crimes are not committed by strangers but by uncles, grand fathers, step dads, cousins and baby sitters.  Sandusky for instance was not a stranger to his victims but a trusted coach, friend and mentor who passed all his background checks and had parents willing to hand their children over to him for overnight stays.

Regarding the urinating in public, this guy could have been more discreet although my date got a good laugh out of it.  I can't help but wonder, what is the difference between this act and using a mens room?  The fair bathroom was simply a row of exposed urinals.  There was a line of men in there and at one of the porcelain receptacles was an eightish year old boy who leaned forward then cocked his head left and right to inspect the troupes.  Do the police know about this place?

Another moment of rudeness was when we were descending a flight of stairs.  There was an elderly man moving slowly in front of me holding onto the banister with his right hand.  A young woman coming up the stairs was ascending on the wrong side and upon encountering the old man, hugged the wall forcing the elderly man to detach his grip and enter the center fray which was biliously moving in both directions.

At that evening's Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, the crowd was massive.  It spilled out of the concert area into the pedestrian walkway.  Those people held their ground and refused to move as hundreds of people attempted to filter through them in an effort to get from point A to point B.  Many in the crowd thought the pedestrians were rude.

All in all, the fair was well done, a lot of fun, a great bargain and much better than I made it out to sound.  It is just more fun to whine and complain about something.  I highly recommend the state fair over all other fairs.

About my superfluous purchase item, it is a sound activated, lighted tee shirt.  It will come in handy for my next Halloween Organ Recital and the Rye Bread Music Festival next summer.  It responds very well to bass and has several gradations of lighting.  Here in this video which I filmed downstairs in my basement I could dance with an elan one can only do when no one else is looking.  Okay, you are but, the lights are off and you can't really see me.  You'll have to come to Rye Bread and get me drunk in order to see the real thing.  Lucky for me I don't drink . . . temperance movement - Puritan that I am . . .

-Malcolm Kogut.

 

Vacation at Mohonk 2013

Mohonk Mountain House Gardens 2013

Mohonk Mountain House Gazebos 2013

Turkey Vulture

A Turkey Vulture near the Eagle Cliff hiking trail above Humpty Dumpty at Mohonk Preserve. 

Toast To the Ta Ta's

I recently attended a wine tasting event which was a fundraiser and promotion for breast cancer awareness. 

One of my sisters died from breast cancer which metastasized to her brain.  After she first discovered a lump she was scared and didn't go to see a doctor for over a year.  She first decided to pray it away.

So ladies, get those things checked.  Don't be embarrassed.  Don't be afraid.  Don't wait and see if it goes away.  Many forms of breast cancer are completely curable if caught early enough. 

For those of you who are religious and wish to pray over it, consider this - maybe God will cure you by sending you to a doctor.  Even Jesus referred people to other experts.  In Luke 17: 12-14 Jesus told ten lepers to go see the priest.  Priests in those days were experts at diagnosing the vast variety of skin ailments since so many people went to them for healing. 

In those days where skin disorders were very common there was a rabid, foaming at the mouth hysteria about leprosy.  Mostly it was the Christians who had skin disorders because they refused to use the public toilets.  Instead, they opted to void in designated fields for purposes of privacy and humility.  They then walked back to the ritual bath area, often barefoot and tracking with them microbes from the fecal infested field.  They then got into a bath that 500 people ritually cleansed themselved in before them.  That germ infested water would go up their noses, in their eyes, mouths, ears and worse yet, into open cuts and scrapes.  It is ironic that the religious zeal for cleanliness was the cause of their many disorders.  Indeed, cleanliness was next to Godliness because it got you closer to God by killing you.

Back to the Ta Ta's.  There is no shame in developing breast cancer.  On the contrary, when you beat it, you will be both a hero and inspiration for others.  If the worse possible diagnosis befalls you, still, don't feel bad or blame yourself or God.   Keep your head up high and tell people not to feel sorry for you.   Feeling sorry for someone is pity, not compassion.  Pity puts one in a stance of looking down upon the sick one.  Compassion (with - suffering) puts one side by side.  The only healing possible in this world of medical miracles is the ability to accept one’s death even as one fights to hang on to life.  With this emotional or spiritual healing comes hope.  With this attitude comes compassion.  With this inner peace comes resurrection of life. 

Have you checked your Ta Ta's today?  If you did, shout it from the roof tops.  Tell your mom, sister, daughter, aunt, neighbor, friend.  Whether you find a lump or not, whether you live or die, you have the power to save many lives.   Be a hero.

Now, men . . .

http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-self-exam

Tendonitis, Playing the Piano and Skiing

I recently wrote a blog about the prevention and cure for tendonitis where I opined that working on your piano or typing technique can improve other activities such as skiing.  Someone called me to task on that comment and challenged me to explain.

It is not that piano playing and skiing are that much related as much as the physics behind them is the same.  The concepts in common are gravity, alignment (kinematic chains) and reactions to actions.

One of the most common injuries to a skier is a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).  It happens simply when the femur and tibia are not properly aligned and the torque doesn't go through the bones but is transferred onto the tiny yet powerful ACL.  The ACL is very strong when properly aligned but break that alignment and it is as weak as a piece of paper.

Every movement has equal and opposite movements.  In playing the piano the pianist has to play down and thusly he is required to have an up motion.  The muscles to make the arm go up are much stronger than the arms which make us go down because to fall down, no muscle is required.  The pianist also goes up and down the keyboard so in order to play left he has to go right.  Here is why:

If I were to swing a tennis racquet, I would toss the ball in the air and swing my arm backward, then swing forward to hit the ball.  To swing a baseball bat or golf club, I would do the same.  When I swim, in order to stroke, my arm goes behind me, then up and in front of me, then down and behind me.  If I were to swat a fly I would raise the swatter before descending down to smoosh its target.  If I were to slap your face, I wouldn't start with my palm on your face.  I would swing backward then forward across your cheek (and you'll let me do it seven times seventy times then turn the other cheek).

If I wanted to jump into the air, I would bend my knees and sink a little to the ground then propel myself upward.  If I were standing on a glass floor and wanted to break it.  I would jump up and keep my knees bent until I was close to the glass, then extend my knees and feet into the surface for maximum impact.

I come from the old school of parallel skiing where I keep my legs together and ski with them as one rather than two legs.  When you ski with your legs or feet apart, you have four edges to worry about and control (dual muscular pulls).  Catching an edge on the snow can cause you to lose balance and fall.  When you ski with your legs parallel, you only have two edges acting as one limb.  The skier always keeps the inside leg a little bit shorter by bending it slightly more.  Both legs and feet have to be turning together in the same direction at the same time much like all five fingers of a pianist  SHOULD only go in one direction at a time.  The skier needs to have his torso and head perfectly aligned and balanced in one chain.

The parallel turn is accomplished not just by jumping or grinding your edges into the snow but by un-weighing yourself.  When turning, there is a bend at the hip and the legs are extended to the right.  You can experience this, sort of, if you stand sideways about four feet from a wall, lean toward the wall with your left hand so that you are at an oblique angle.  All your weight should be in your right leg (inside the foot-radial side) and the left leg is parallel.  At tremendous forces the edge is digging into the ice (if you ski in the east) and snow (if you ski out west).

That is kind of what a turn feels like but not as static.  This is also a left turn.  As you turn left by leaning into the inside right ski edge, your body will feel the momentum and you would then slightly tuck both knees up and shift your legs to the other side but when you extend your legs so that your skis go down, you lean into the inside of the left ski edge:  These are equal and opposite motions, with perfect alignment, with both legs going in the same direction at the same time.

This method of un-weighing can look like the skier is jumping in the air but they are actually just extending their legs and shifting weight from right to left.  With balance, momentum, extension and retraction, this keeps him upright and in control.

Also, the skier needs to keep the front of his body always facing down the hill where the fall line is or where gravity is pulling him.  If he deviates from the fall line, there needs to be a lot of adjustments lest he catch an edge resulting in a face plant or yard sale.

It sounds complicated but if you are a parallel skier, it makes total sense.  The skier's whole body can only do one thing at a time, either turn left or right or coast forward.  Many skiers are taught to snowplow which is skiing on the inside edges of both skies at the same time but that isn't skiing.  It is ice making and it puts pressure on the knees and maintains constant flexion of the muscles.  As a novice masters the snowplow they are taught the stem Christie which is one step away from parallel but most skiers don't progress to the next step predominately because the nature of un-weighing the whole body is foreign to many people's concept and it requires a leap of faith.  A shy skier will never move beyond the stem Christie. They lack the confidence that their edge will be there if they un-weigh so they remain advanced beginners or intermediate skiers at best because they don't understand nor trust the concept of a closed-loop kinematic chain. 

Have you ever noticed that after somebody has a heart attack or loses a child or goes through anything really heavy, their outlook can change overnight?  They see life on a more deep level than before.  They tend to think about the bigger things and not care so much about the color their cars are or what clothes are in style.  When your mind and body are at one with the mountain, all the obstacles and gravity melts away.

So, like the pianist whose arm can only go in one direction at a time, the skiers body can only go in one direction at a time.  If his body or legs oppose that, he can still ski, just not well.

For the past twenty years ski makers have been designing parabolic skies which are shaped to promote parallel skiing and it is funny to see people skiing parallel without the un-weighing of their body.  Instead they are rolling the ski from edge to edge.  They still fall because they are trying to control the ground rather than control their body and go with gravity.

When skiing in deep powder or on ice, the skier needs this un-weighing as if they are trying to plunge through a glass floor.  This makes it so that the ski edges can dig in to whatever they are resisting.  Lack of un-weighing is why most skiers cannot ski on ice or in deep powder.  They then complain about the mountain or the conditions. 

A skier who tries to control the ski, control the ground and control gravity, will not be a good skier and can easily hurt themselves.  If they use the ski as an extension of their body and they go with gravity rather than fighting it, they can control everything and it will be effortless because they won't be static and engaging the same muscles all the time.  On the contrary.  Our muscles which aid in us going up are much stronger than our muscles that help us go down (Hamstrings Vs Quads).  Ironically, it is engaging the weaker hamstring which gives the quads a break and allows them to work more efficiently and most importantly - rest.

A pianist who fights with the mechanical nature of a piano will forever be challenged by it and their own bodies and, most likely, injured by it.  The pianist is not the engine to the instrument as much as a conduit to the music that already exists.  Only when the closed-loop kinematic chain of the body is achieved and alignment between body and instrument coalesce into one can a musician become an artist or a skier master the gravity of the mountain.

It is interesting to note that true artists or true prodigies don't know what they are doing.  What they do is simply natural to them.  When they try to explain what they do they get it wrong because they explain how they feel.  Bach, for instance, taught his students to scratch the key in a carrezando technique because what he was feeling when he played was his fingers caressing the keys.  What was really happening was as he was lifting and dropping his arm and moving in and out onto the keys because instinctively, he knew his fingers were different lengths and equalizing them caused micro tension.  The sensation of caressing the keys was a result of his arm moving the fingers.  That is what he felt but caressing the keys was not what he was doing. 

Another thing teachers get wrong is when they tell their students to relax the hand.  They need to relax the correct muscles at the right time.  But that is a topic for another time. 

Original slide on Tendonitis
http://www.slideshare.net/sa/8652ca32b9f25fa5adb94fe916c18599

Nathanial Cyrenius Ingram

My good friend Nathanial "Cy" Ingram was born on December 5, 1925 and passed away on Thursday, March 7, 2013.  There was no funeral, no announcement and no wake for this wonderful man.  His family, friends and church only found out this June that he died and was secretly cremated.  We recently held a private memorial service for him and only family, his church and friends were invited to attend.  There, many wonderful stories of Cy were told as we celebrated his life and friendship.

Cy was a war hero who earned many awards for his service to our great country.  In the accompanying picture, you can see Cy proudly displaying the medals, badges and patch he received. 

Left to right, rear:  Expert Marksmanship Qualification Badge with clasps for Rifle, expert infantryman and four combat actions!

Bronze Star, awarded for acts of heroism, merit or Meritorious service in a combat zone.

Silver Star, the third highest military decoration for Valor awarded to Cy for gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States, in this case Nazi Germany.  In this one instance he saved the lives of ten men.  Injured and unable to walk, one by one, on his butt he dragged them away from enemy fire and hoisted each of them over a stone wall to safety.

Purple Heart, awarded for being injured while serving with the military.

Left to right, front:  Victory Medal, awarded to all who served in the  military during World War II.

European Theater Medal, with three oak leaf clusters for three years of service there.

Good Conduct Medal awarded to active duty members of the U.S. military who complete three consecutive years of honorable service.

 Shoulder patch of the 30th Infantry Division (Old Hickory) who valiantly served in Normandy, France, Germany and the Battle of the Bulge.

One story which I shared was about Cy's garden.  Cy, like a new Antaeus, had about six acres of back yard and it was laced with flower beds, fountains, arches and lattice which supported the growth of Trumpet Vines, Clematis and Wisteria.  Among his prized floral arrays were several Peony beds.

Cy had an addition built onto the back of his house.  It was a large octagon shaped room with a marble fire place and several  double glass doors which could be opened up.

Cy told me about one spring morning when a woman knocked on his door asking if she could cut some of his Peony flowers for her wedding that weekend.  Cy asked her where she was getting married and she said that it was going to be at the court house and performed by a Justice of the Peace. 

Cy said,
"Nonsense.  Have the wedding in my back yard and you can hold the reception in my octagon room."
She did and Cy even gave her a cash gift.  That was the kind of gentle man he was.  He is sorely missed.

The Department of the Aging and family and friends need to be vigilante against people befriending and tricking our elderly into signing everything they own over to scrupulous individuals. 

Healing from Tendonitis

I put together a slide show on healing from tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.  It can be found on SlideShare:
http://www.slideshare.net/sa/8652ca32b9f25fa5adb94fe916c18599

Google Fiber: A different kind of Internet.

As many people are aware, Time Warner Cable is increasing their fees and hardware rental charges, once again.  Time Warner Cable is already making a 97 percent margin on their almost comically profitable internet, phone and cable services.  Most Americans have no choice but to deal with TWC because they are the only cable and internet provider out there.  TV Networks are constantly doing battle with them over broadcast rates (Currently CBS in many major cities).

Anyone who has ever been overseas knows that the United States languishes in the middle of the pack of the world’s developed nations in internet access speeds, with average download speeds of just 11megabits per second. In many Asian and European countries who are more poor than we, customers can commonly get affordable service providing hundreds of megabits or more.

Our greedy and corrupt Congress and the FCC won’t make it easier for other companies to compete with TWC because of the cable industry's powerful lobby's and campaign support.

But, look out.  Here comes Google Fiber with a connection speed 100 times faster than TWC's download speeds, crystal clear high definition TV, and endless possibilities.
It's not cable. And it's not just Internet. It's Google Fiber.  Check them out at:

https://fiber.google.com/about

Here are their plans:
Free Internet $0/mo $300 construction fee
Gigabit Internet $70/mo $300 waived construction fee
Gigabit + TV $120/mo $300 waived construction fee

So far it is only available in three cities because the infrastructure doesn't exist.  They have to lay their own fiber cable and that is a long, expensive and arduous task.  The cities are Provo, Austin and Kansas City.  Over 1,100 cities have applied for Google Fiber and Topeka even temporarily changed its name to Google, KS in an effort to woo Google into their city. 

In Kansas City, Missouri, a customer reported that they have at least 50 times faster than their previous internet access speed and a substantially better TV service, all for only $125 a month, tax included.

Imagine simultaneously streaming four high-definition TV shows and recording three of them on the included two-terabyte DVR. You can be running video via Wi-Fi on two smartphones and on two laptops, and also be watching and recording TV shows all at the same time.  It’s a vastly superior service.  And that’s even without touching high-bandwidth Web apps that work seamlessly at super fast speeds, such as 3-D maps of cities that have imperceptible load times.

Currently Google says that it is not yet profitable for them to roll out Fiber to every city.  If they could guarantee that the customer base would be there, that would make it more enticing to them.

Everyone should contact Google and tell them you want Google Fiber in your town or city.  Start online web surveys, create online petitions, blog about it, write your representative and ask them to facilitate inviting Google to your town, email all your friends, make some noise.  You need only one creative person with a lot of time on their hands to shoulder the responsibility, vanguard a group, phalanx an offense or germinate a healthy dose of competition so that the consumer wins and not corporate and political greed.  

Do you dream of a better country?  Then there is no dream, only do.  Congress won't do it for you.

Marijuana; And How Politicians Hurt Society

Throughout history, politicians, together with big business and lobby's have been steering the country in calumnious directions in an effort to make money, control people, decimate competition and win elections. 

Consider the Puritan Witch Hunts.  We didn't hunt witches, run them out of town and burn them at the stake because they were actually turning people into frogs and conjuring demons.  Some of them were actually political troublemakers, they may have owned land that someone else wanted or someone just didn't like them.  Many of them were falsely accused because their accusers were tortured into giving names.

So how do you get people rallied into an irrational blood thirsty mob willing to take up pitchforks and torches?   You use children.  Everyone knows that witches eat children and lock them up in dungeons and towers.  That is where we get stories such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Riding hood."  Think of the children. 

Our current boondoggle sex offender registry is no different.  You need only take a few high profile crimes, scare the public into thinking that this could happen in their back yard, you publish a hundred million dollar photo album online with no delineating information about the case, the remorse, acceptance of responsibility or rehabilitation, and then you disenfranchise an entire class of citizen - to protect the children.   An 18 year old HS senior who has sex with his 15 year old HS sweetheart is not so much a child rapist (although by law he is) than a teen with raging hormones and quite possibly, they are two kids in love. 

Bionically, Mary was thirteen and Joseph was in his forties when they got married.  That was a different culture and a different time, though.  In those days  life expectancy was about forty so girls had to start pumping out babies ASAP in an effort to propagate the population. 

Today, the registry is a giant blind net ranging from violent murderers to people who urinate in public.  This registry program wins elections, sells papers, supports our struggling prison system and creates businesses designed to protect you from the monster next door. 

There was another man who used children for job security, to become famous, to triple his budget, to hobnob with the rich and powerful, to spread mis-truth and to win favor and support from big business.  His name was Harry Jacob Anslinger.

The war on drugs is a billion dollar boondoggle.  Much like Prohibition in the ‘20s which made tons of money for suppliers and made gangsters very wealthy. 

Politicians love to cherry pick data and skewed statistics in an effort to get what they want, to win elections, to scare people into seeing things their way, to obtain and distribute grant money and to bribe or win supporters.  It is easy for them to make something up, spin, fold, mutilate the facts and statistics or rely on unconfirmed data and hearsay.  Politicians are adroit at not dealing in realty but in the false narrative.  That's the nature of the politician.  They often seek out and only listen to the "expert" who shares their same opinion.  Show me an expert witness with one opinion and I'll show you another with an equal and opposite one. 

We know that alcohol is the root cause of many car accidents and deaths.  Alcohol also amplifies bad behavior in people and some of these people may beat their wives and kids, drink their paychecks and many drunks die in alcohol fueled car accidents.  People die every day from liver and heart damage caused by alcohol and millions of people suffer from addiction and other medical maladies caused by alcohol. 

In 1951, the United Nations reported that an estimated 200 million people used marijuana.  It has been used for over 5,000 years and the earliest reference was from China where it was used to relieve pain during surgery.  For decades it was pedaled by vendors as a nostrum for swelled breasts, sore nipples, shingles, piles, bronchitis, eczema, migraine, menstrual discomfort, sore throat, colic, arthritis, rheumatism, depression, epileptic fits, gout, it was sold as an aphrodisiac, and ironically, it was used successfully as a treatment for alcoholism. 

Marijuana was a source of rope and cloth fibers, birdseed, essential oils and many medicinal products.  It has long been a cash crop for many farmers including President George Washington.  Unlike Bill Clinton and certainly like Barack Obama, George probably inhaled.  So how did this weed become illegal?

During prohibition, many of the poor and minorities were unable to acquire illegal alcohol from gangsters so they turned to the cheaper and less harmful medicinal herb, marijuana.  They found it stimulating, relaxing, non toxic and non addictive.

In the 1930s the Treasury Department began their warfare on marijuana.  Prohibition was repealed and liquor began to flow freely but the people who took to smoking pot when liquor was scarce, illegal and expensive, continued smoking it because it was still cheaper, easier to get, faster acting, didn't render the user to an intoxicated and vomiting stupor, you could grow your own, it wasn't addictive and it didn't give you a hangover like alcohol did.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, like the Bureau of Prohibition, was under the auspices of the U.S. Treasury Department. At that time, the sale of marijuana was considered a loss of revenue because it could not be taxed and people could grow it themselves. There was no way to control it and it was dipping into alcohol and tobacco sales.

The Newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics then began a 7 year campaign to fight marijuana and labeled it a killer drug.  Harry Jacob Anslinger led this new office and his scare campaign was in all the papers and on all radio stations.  It became a political campaign tool and parents were frightened into thinking that marijuana was everywhere and it would kill their children or destroy their lives - think of the children.    

Harry Anslinger claimed that he had witnessed a scene that affected his life. When he was 12, he heard the screams of a morphine addict.  I'm not sure what this has to do with marijuana but it became his political football and excuse for his rabid and foaming at the mouth lust to criminalize pot, and it was job security.  It was easy for him to get political support because he had budgets, business backers, the media and he could make up facts.

Thousands of people were surgically arrested for the possession of pot.  They were mostly black and poor.  Marijuana was a great tool to ethnically cleanse certain neighborhoods and was an easy means to get people you didn't like off the street, especially if you couldn't get them on some other charge.   I once knew a cop who admitted to me that they had no evidence on an arsonist so they planted pot on him just to get him in the system.  The same thing happened to Freeway Rick Ross.  He rarely carried drugs of any kind.  He did however walk around with about $80,000 in his pocket which every day, he freely gave it all out to the people in his community who needed it for food, rent, medicine or school.  The police finally got him off the street but he also had evidence against the cops so they brokered a deal.

New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was not convinced of Anslinger's arguments and requested the first in depth study into the effects of smoking marijuana.  He remembered a report he read by the Army Board of Inquiry that the drug was used by many soldiers and was deemed harmless to them.  La Guardia requested that the New York Academy of Medicine to do a thorough study of the herb. 

This report systematically contradicted claims made by Anslinger and the U.S. Treasury Department that smoking marijuana results in insanity, deteriorates physical health, assists in criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, is physically addictive, is a gateway drug to more dangerous drugs and the report determined that the practice of smoking marijuana did not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word.  Ultimately, the worse effect smoking pot will have on someone is 2 - 40 years in prison, a criminal record and no hope of getting a job when they got out. 

Released in 1944, the La Guardia report  (http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/sourcefiles/laguardia.pdf) infuriated Harry Anslinger who was campaigning against marijuana and he condemned it as unscientific.  Anslinger then went on an offensive against what he saw as a "degenerate Hollywood" that was promoting marijuana use. After high profile arrests of actors like Robert Mitchum, Anslinger gained full control over future scripts.   Cotton farmers and farming lobbies who didn't want hemp competing with their crop stood behind and supported Anslinger, in many way$.

Much like the way Congress works today, the early laws against marijuana were often passed with little public attention. Many people allege that Anslinger and the campaign against marijuana had a hidden agenda.  DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor.  Hemp took less time and was significantly less expensive to harvest an acre of than it did for cotton.  Today, the lies and half truths Anslinger bandied about still exist simply because of ignorance and indoctrinated lies.  

Anslinger's primary focus was to alarm the public of the threat in their community. He used the mass media as his forum to start this national movement to scare people about a problem that didn't exist.  This required a larger staff and bigger budgets.  He used isolated and even unrelated stories to get his point across.  Here are a few of his press releases:

"An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana."

“By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms…. Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him….”

People still beleive these lies today.  Anslinger was not afraid to use race to scare people, either:

"Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy."

"Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."

Anslinger also noted that Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker both died after years of heroin and alcohol abuse so he orchestrated a nationwide dragnet of jazz musicians and kept a file called "Marijuana and Musicians."  Keep in mind that Billie and Charlie died of heroin and alcohol abuse, not marijuana.

It's time we stopped wasting our tax dollars enforcing outdated laws based upon lies and incarcerating non-violent "offenders" for possession of an herb. Recreational drugs are not anything I am interested in but who am I to tell someone what they can or cannot put in their bodies when the stuff really doesn't harm anyone? I've yet to meet a mean, nasty stoner, but I've dealt with more than my fair share of mean, nasty drunks and mean nasty "good" people who go to church on Sunday yet harbor hate and prejudice and are eager to run people out of town whom they don't like.  (Hands in the air) Praise Jesus.

We can use our tax dollars to address much bigger problems such as education, crime and rebuilding our failing roads and bridges.  Legalizing marijuana will take the cash flow away from major crime gangs and we can then cut our police and prison budgets.  When the prohibition on alcohol was lifted, the next day, Al Capone was out of a job. 

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King who is pushing his new law The KIDS Act, said that Mexicans are crossing the border and desert each carrying 75 pounds of marijuana.  Uhm, like, you know, do you know how big a 75 pound bag of pot would be?  More false narrative.  Steve King, you're funny.  Who voted for you?

Not only should pot be legal, maybe it should be part of the daily regimen of our New York politicians. It already is for some of them (Steve Katz).  Greed and job security is to blame for their stupidity, corruption and many of their asinine decisions. They push lies in order to pass their own bills which are usually laden with hidden pork.  Maybe if our politicians were stoned, they'd make less destructive legislation and focus on what is good and needed rather than how they can justify a pay raise and pretend to look busy. 

When my sister was dying from brain cancer which metastasized from breast cancer, a morphine induced coma was unacceptable and not how she wanted to live out her final days.  Marijuana made it so that she could consciously enjoy her family for a few more precious weeks with minimal pain.  So many people are suffering today from medicine and their side effects.  It's time to recognize that marijuana has a place in the treatment of certain diseases and treatment side effects.

And Congress, quit passing stupid laws in an effort to make it look like your are doing something.  Fix the laws already broken.  Astrologically we are leaving the Piscean age and entering into Aquarius, the age of enlightenment.   Let's facilitate that.

For more reading:

More and more police officers are realizing the War on Drugs is a mistake
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-reasons-cops-want-to-legalize-marijuana-20130627

Marijuana Legalization Gains Support, Confounding Policymakers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/29/marijuana-legalization_n_3521547.html

Sweet Georgia Brown